comb of iron and asphodel (so bright and so brazen)
by kitashvi
Summary: The morning of the fall equinox, Bakura Ryou almost drowns in the onsen while communing with his dead sister. The afternoon of the fall equinox, Mutou Yugi slides onto Bakura Ryou's lap and kisses him. These two things are not unrelated. (But perhaps we should rewind.)


**this is the YGOME16 gift for MidousujiAkira, and they wanted fluffy heartshipping, the crew going on an adventure, gay stuff, and they headcanon bpd!ryou.**

 **also, a note as far as reading goes: ryokan are traditional japanese inns and it's common that they have an onsen (hot spring) attached that people can use. also, cicadas have an unfortunate habit of not dying and staying dead. in japanese they're called 蝉爆弾** **(semi bakudan) or cicada bombs, because the little bastards come screaming back to life when you bump into them**

* * *

It's the end of September and the shrieking hell-beasts colloquially referred to as cicadas have emerged chittering and angry from the rotten depths they call home, and Ryou takes a deep breath in the sliver of space he's been granted between Anzu and the car door. There's one trapped in his head, he thinks, high-pitched screaming a backdrop to Jou in front fiddling with the radio and arguing over directions to Honda's family's ryokan. Next to him, Anzu and Yugi flip through an American comic book. The rustling of the pages is the dry murmur of buzzing wings, and Ryou presses his face harder into the cool glass and convinces himself that this was a good idea.

The drive is long enough that he's had this conversation with himself a half-dozen times already: once before the car peeled to a stop in front of his apartment after school and he tossed his bag in the trunk, another two times as they wrong-turned their way onto the highway and out of town, three more times as the crush of pre-equinox holiday traffic in Domino proper gave way to the meandering lanes of suburbia and then the wide expanses of undeveloped land outside the city. They've picked their way into the mountains now—the _right_ mountain, according to Honda, who is in fact the only one who's been up here and the one behind the wheel—and Ryou absently watches the gaps in the trees blur by. These are his friends. They like him. They, in fact, enjoy his company enough to invite him to spend the fall equinox at the Honda ryokan when they could have just as easily wished him a happy holiday and gone without him—Yugi had smiled and asked so nicely and after all, his father was out of town for work and Ryou didn't have the patience to take the train back to his old town to visit Amane's grave. Too many old neighbors took advantage of the day off to clean their family graves and ask too many questions and point too many fingers and Ryou is going to have _fun_ this weekend if it damn well kills him.

Ryou's view of the passing mountainside jerks to the side as the car overcorrects and he slides into Anzu as Jou swears and Honda yanks the wheel. The cicada shriek in his brain kicks up a notch and Ryou takes a deep breath, assures himself that everything is _fine,_ and completely misses whatever it is that Yugi asks him.

Ryou leans forward to look past Anzu at Yugi. "Sorry?"

Yugi has one white-knuckled grip on the backseat handhold and the other hand digging into the driver's headrest but he's grinning, more amused than afraid. The comic book had slipped from his hands and Yugi spares a glances at the bickering up front before he risks letting go to grab it. "I asked if you were alright, Ryou?"

"Oh—ah," Ryou presses back against the door to give Anzu more room, grimaces and rubs at the back of his neck. "I prefer not to be shaken _or_ stirred, honestly, but I'm fine."

Yugi opens his mouth to speak but Anzu turns green between them and mutters, "You might want to hold that thought." Honda barks something triumphant, swings the car to the left, and steers them up a steep gravel trail.

Jou snaps " _Fuck_ " before Ryou can think to do it himself and the car groans at a total standstill against gravel and gravity, and Ryou didn't survive the apocalypse to be done in by _landscaping_ , for fuck's sake. He digs his fingers into the pleather of the car door and Anzu grips his other hand in a tight squeeze and to his far left Yugi laughs a little wildly, but the car jerks and sputters and grumbles the last few feet to horizontal safety.

"See?" Honda says to no one in particular as the backseat collectively pries their fingers off one another, "I told you we'd make good time getting up here."

Ryou almost trips over Jou when they get out, intent as he is on alternating between kissing the ground and lambasting Honda with a larger vocabulary than Ryou had thought he possessed—"All that cram school paying off," Anzu mutters as she grabs her bag, smiling when Yugi snorts and hides his grin behind a hand—and even though the equinox doesn't start until tomorrow, Honda's aunt and uncle have already left for Osaka and the ryokan is empty. Honda lets them into the entrance hall while he fumbles with the lights, and Ryou toes his shoes off and sinks onto one of the low couches, waits for the feeling to return to his legs after so long cramped. Socked feet jostle his ankle by accident and the pins and needles retaliate with a vengeance as Yugi flops down next to him, casually friendly in a way Ryou can only ever hope to be, raking one hand through his own hair and fiddling with Ryou's braid with the other. He tugs gently and Ryou leans back too. "So," Ryou starts, "we lived."

Yugi takes the liberty of pulling the tie out of his hair and combing his braid out with his fingers. "Barely," he laughs. "I think I'm going to ask Anzu to drive us back down."

"I think that would be best," Ryou says. Yugi's hand keeps running absently through his hair while Anzu marshals the forces and Ryou closes his eyes and _doesn't_ read into it, because Yugi is nice and Yugi loves his friends and Yugi is just a _touchy_ person—just because Ryou oscillates between the emotional range of a teaspoon and a bathtub doesn't mean the rest of the world can't maintain normal human interaction without having a nervous breakdown—

"Ryou?" Ryou jerks upright and Yugi's fingers slip from his hair as Anzu leans over him against the back of the couch. "Would you mind being alone?" Ryou arches an eyebrow, not entirely certain where Anzu is going with what sounds like the beginning of a meaningful heart-to-heart, but Anzu must realize how vague she's being. "In a room, I mean!" she continues. "You were supposed to be with Ryuuji, but he had to bail for that corporate meeting in France and—"

Well now, doesn't that make more sense. "It's fine," Ryou cuts her off, ignores the voice that hisses _could be better, could be more_ , cicada-persistent and insidious in his ear, a low buzz of bullshit that makes him think of a hand in his and fingers in his hair and all those little things he's worked up into something they're obviously _not._ "Am I this way?" he asks instead, ducking down the first hallway he sees and not looking back, drops his bag just inside the door to his actually lovely little room and slides the door shut. The wooden lattice of the screen is grounding against his back as he reaches under his sweatshirt, traces the scars on his chest _one two three four five_ and takes a deep breath.

The knock on the door makes him jump, flinching away from the screen and stubbing his toe on the tatami. His muttered _damnit_ doesn't go unnoticed and his door opens a crack as fingers slip around the edge of the screen. "Ryou?"

Ryou rummages through his bag for his yukata and the bottle of soap he swears he packed before answering, "Yes?"

There's a tap that must be Yugi resting his forehead against the screen. "We're headed into the onsen, if you want to join us?"

The consideration chafes—he's not a child, he's not made of glass—but if you twisted his arm and made him talk he'd admit he's still not totally okay with these people, this friendship. He can see the jagged edges that don't quite line up between their history and the future they insist on including him in, and Yugi knows, and Yugi's _trying_ , and Ryou's grateful. "Of course," he says instead. "Give me a minute?"

"Sure!" And Yugi waits for Ryou to change into his yukata and step outside, slings his arm into the crook of Ryou's elbow and all but pulls him down the hall to the showers. Honda's family's ryokan is achingly traditional and quaint down to the antique faucets in the shower room, and Ryou and Yugi stow their yukatas and drying towels in the changing cubbies before grabbing stools and washbowls and picking their way around the battleground of slippery tile Jou and Honda left behind in the shower room.

"So," Yugi says conversationally as they sit next to each other and fiddle with the tap. "How've you been?" He chuckles at his own question as he scrubs his arms with soap. "I haven't really seen you since—" The scrubbing stops. Yugi tilts his head back and huffs a breath at the ceiling, doesn't say _since the world almost ended, since you tried to kill us_ , "Well, it's been a while, huh?"

The ryokan is old enough that they never bothered to install showerheads, so Ryou waits until the tap is done groaning and wailing and finally deigns to fill his bowl with lukewarm water. "I've been alright," Ryou says, and it's not a lie, not exactly. "Busy with school, helping my father—there's a new exhibit coming to the museum in a couple of weeks, so we've been packing up the old one."

Yugi pauses, halfway through running a washcloth up his leg. "Oh, the Egyptian exhibit is moving?" His voice is too calm, the room suddenly too quiet. "I—" he clears his throat, "I didn't know that."

"Yugi, I didn't realize—" Ryou half-turns on his stool, cringes because how could he _forget._ "I can sneak you in to see if before the Antiquities Committee comes back for them. So you can see it—" _him_ "—one more time."

Yugi waves him off with a smile that doesn't quite reach his eyes, and he pours his washbowl over his chest like nothing's happened. "It's okay! I don't want to get you in trouble or anything. Besides," he looks at Ryou but he's not looking _at_ him, "I just miss him, you know?"

Ryou doesn't know, actually, doesn't want to talk about how the Spirit of the Ring was only ever useful as a distraction, a (un)welcome break from the puzzle-piece-rat-maze of Ryou's life, that the only thing he ever envied the Spirit for was how blatantly he _didn't care_ what others thought of him. Ryou nods instead, because Yugi needs someone who understands and Ryou can fit in that skin, pull that personality over his hollowest places and make it breath. Yugi smiles, wider this time, brighter, and Ryou smiles back.

Jou and Honda are already in the onsen when Ryou and Yugi step outside, trying to dunk the other's head under the water in flagrant disregard of every bit of good onsen etiquette Ryou's ever learned. Yugi slips his arm from Ryou's as he steps away, rolling his eyes and skirting the edge of the bath before Jou's reaching hands can tug him in. The towel he's settled on his head threatens to slip off as he looks around. "Where's Anzu?"

Honda frees himself by slopping his soaking towel right across Jou's face. "In the women's bath," he tells them as Jou splutters, "I asked her if she wanted to join us and I think her exact words were—"

Honda disappears as Jou bears down on him and shoves him under the water. "Were _rude!_ " Jou shouts to be heard over the barrier fence separating the two baths. "And hurt my feelings!"

If Anzu can hear them, she doesn't bother to answer. Ryou skirts the pool of steaming water that Honda and Jou have splashed out of the onsen and picks his way between the scattered leaves and dried up cicada husks—Ryou remembers learning the phrase _dropping like flies_ in his English class and wonders how whoever coined it would feel about the end of rainy season in Japan when the cicadas started dropping like, well, _cicadas._ In the water Yugi says something and Ryou looks up to catch the last of his sentence, doesn't watch where he's going and steps right into a pile of wings and shells.

He feels it before he hears it, the buzzing carcass against his foot screaming back to life and skittering across the stone and Ryou jumps in spite of himself, yells "Shit!" and presses a hand to his chest. The born-again cicada is still shrieking as it retreats into the undergrowth and Ryou risks a look up at his friends. It's just as bad as he'd thought—Jou and Honda frozen halfway through dunking each other and Yugi is partway out of the water, expression torn between laughter and concern.

As he pulls his foot out of the mess, Yugi and Honda clamor over each other to get a word in edgewise—"Ryou, are you okay—Did you just _swear?_ "—but Jou's muffled laughter drowns them both out. Ryou hears him before Jou can stop himself, hands clapped over his mouth, and gods, Ryou _knows_ it's a petty thing to get upset over, knows that he would've laughed if it'd been Jou. But his brain is already at work shoveling his every interaction with Jou into the proverbial frying pan, stripping it of every semblance of depth or context until it's nothing but black and white and concluding—with absolute certainty and despite Ryou _knowing better_ —that Jounouchi Katsuya is the absolute _worst._

Jou's still stumbling over apologies by the time Ryou sinks into the bath next to Yugi and the water is _amazing_ , almost enough so that Ryou is ready to forgive both Jou and the cicada-shrill voice that hisses _he's a shit duelist and he doesn't like you, it doesn't matter, you never liked him anyway_ to the beat of his pulse. He slides down the ledge until the water laps just under his chin and watches a stray lock of hair from the haphazardly arranged pile on his head trail in front of him, takes a deep breath of onsen steam and repeats that he's fine fine _fine_.

/

By the time they pull themselves pruney and hungry from the water, veto Honda's suggestion to drive down into the village nearby for food— _over my dead body_ , Jou insists, grimaces when Anzu points out that's probably exactly what it would take—and find the one local restaurant willing to deliver up so steep a hill, Ryou's still giving Jou a wide berth, still sees him black-and-white, all-or-nothing irrational ( _just call it your shit list_ , the Spirit snaps at him when he stops speaking to his first boyfriend over something he can't now recall, _he'll be off it in a day or so, landlord, you know so yourself_ , and Ryou rolls his eyes when two days later his boyfriend is again the light of his life and the Spirit was fucking _right_ ). By the time they part ways to go to bed Ryou's practically crawling out of his skin. He wants to ask Yugi if he misses the tag-team of it; mysterious stains in his favorite sweaters and waking up in parts of town he certainly couldn't have walked to aside, Ryou would be lying if he said he didn't find a day of _quiet_ such a terrible trade-off for being so unceremoniously possessed and used as a vehicle for millennia-old revenge.

But he doesn't. He stares at the ceiling and fidgets under his blanket instead, listening to the inn around him creak and settle in the night, checks the time on his phone every three minutes and tries, against all odds, to _go the fuck to sleep_.

Ryou's phone has given up the ghost and he knows the exact number of branches on the ornamental bonsai on his windowsill by the time he throws back the covers and sets off down the hallway.

The ryokan at night is out to get him, Ryou decides, moonlit elegance and serene beauty notwithstanding. His door skitters on its track and the floorboards creak as he tiptoes through the inn and the hiss and groan of the faucet is a hundred times louder in the dark. Ryou shoves his pajamas in the cubby and tosses a couple of cursory bowlfuls of lukewarm water over his chest and shoulders, and then he's slipping into the onsen, hair fanning out in the water around him. He sinks all the way down until it's just his eyes peeking out from the water, watches his hair blur and fade into the rising steam. The ryokan looms dark behind him; everyone must be asleep which means he's _alone_ —even the cicadas are silent, all but one that thrums in his head. Ryou huffs a breath just to watch it bubble up in front of him and ducks his head under the water, just for a moment, just to indulge in the quiet and then—and then he surfaces, and he is not alone.

( _Silly boy,_ the Spirit tells him the first time, fourteen years old with three classmates in the hospital and an entire town turned against him, _you're never alone._ )

He knows then, immediately, that this was a mistake, that he should've risked the stares and pointed fingers to sit by his sister's grave because instead—"You're here."

His long-dead sister cocks her head to the side and regards him, placid as the water her legs pass clean through. Ryou pointedly doesn't think about every horror movie he's ever seen where the dead girl crawls out of a body of water, but he doesn't get any closer all the same. "Amane?"

Again silence and Ryou wonders if this is it, if he's finally gone and lost his fucking mind completely, the metronome in his head finally spun itself out because it can't keep up with his ever-changing tempo or—or if Amane is actually _here_ , to scold him for not coming to her grave or to drag him into the underworld with her. He's spent so long with his relics and books and spells, peeking through the keyhole for the tiniest glimpse, isn't it about time she show him what's waiting on the other side?

The muscles in his legs start to cramp from crouching in the water but Amane has yet to so much as blink. Ryou stays put. His head spins, dizzy with exhaustion, and he considers for the first time whether or not climbing into the water was the smartest cure for his restlessness. A strand of Ryou's hair drops from his shoulder into the water and the movement sends ripples cascading out and right through Amane's calves, but she has yet to peel off her own face or toss her head like a beach ball so Ryou risks speaking again. "Are you mad at me?"

Amane doesn't deign to answer him and Ryou supposes he deserves it. He remembers, vaguely, the silent treatment she would give him when they were little for taking her crayons or drinking the last of the juice and this feels enough the same that he's nostalgic instead of scared. Amane kicks her legs in the water and tucks her hair behind her ears and says absolutely nothing.

Ryou stares at her long enough that his eyes start to burn, prickling at the strain and the steam that makes his sister flicker and wave in the night air. She still hasn't spoken, just leans forward with her hands braced on the lip of the bath like she's at any risk of falling in or getting wet and looks at him, watch him watch her. Ryou reaches up to brush a lock of hair away that's stuck to his face and yawns. Steam curls down his throat and Amane flickers like a bad late-night horror movie poltergeist. It makes Ryou flinch, sluggish with the heat and lack of sleep, and he reaches back to catch himself on the ledge behind him—his head is spinning and his chest is tight, he feels the ledge slip out from under his grip and the water closes over his head. He gasps and flounders to right himself, but his hair curls around his neck to stick to his face and his knee scrapes the bottom of the bath. Water rushes into his mouth, down his throat, settles into his lungs like it's waited all this time to make a home there.

They're hours out from Domino and at least twenty minutes away from the nearby town, so the sky was beautiful when Ryou first crept outside. He knows now, four feet underwater at the bottom of the onsen, that the lights he can see beyond the water surface probably have more to do with his slow and inevitable death at the hands of oxygen deprivation than they are actual stars, but Ryou's not certain he didn't hit his head on the ledge on the way down and he's learning to appreciate the silver linings in situations like these. How bad would it really be, Ryou wonders, if this were the end—granted, his father would probably cry and it's a little embarrassing to put _fell on his ass in the bathwater_ as a cause of death, but he's been personally acquainted with a number of worse ways to die in the past couple years. His vision starts to blur, stars all winking out and smooth darkness creeping in at the edges.

Legs and arms and a shock of hair, all decidedly corporeal, ruin Ryou's view of the sky beyond the water. Ragged nails with chipped polish score rows of scratches against his ribs as hands hook under his arms and _yank_ , and the air is shockingly cold when his head breaks the surface. The natural rock of the onsen that he'd admired earlier scrapes his back and legs as he's hauled onto the patio and Ryou pieces together ragged nails and chipped polish and a cartouche tattoo in the cradle of a thin wrist and _oh gods_ , he wants to crawl back in the water and die instead of face the fact that it's Yugi who's pulled his sorry ass away from the brink of his untimely demise.

Ryou, sadly, doesn't have time to stew over the particular depth and flavor of what's going to be his eternal shame because he's too busy curling over his knees and hacking up water. He must be coughing loud enough to wake the dead (ha _ha_ ) and both his skin and Yugi's is splotchy red in the cold, but Yugi runs a hand up and down his spine, murmuring something Ryou can't quite make out but assumes is supposed to be comforting. It's all fuzzy from there—he remembers stumbling with Yugi's arm around his waist, his own fumbling apologies and Yugi's soothing murmurs and the glimpse of Amane still sitting at the edge of the bath, still watching him, as Yugi steers them back inside—

/

He wakes up with to the taste of unbrushed teeth and his not-dead-anymore phone cheerily reminding that it's ten in the morning. The inside of his chest feels like it's been scooped out with a melon baller and his skin feels two sizes too tight and so Ryou finds he doesn't much care _how_ his phone set itself to charge again or if he'd set it to charge and forgotten—honestly, most of the night before is too much a blur for his own comfort and he didn't think he'd had that much to drink.

Ryou rolls overs, hand reaching to slap his phone alarm into submission, comes face to face with Yugi, and promptly remembers he hadn't had anything to drink last night at all.

Yugi's awake, lying on his side with one arm tucked under his head and staring at Ryou. Their legs are tangled together under the blanket and Ryou would really rather like to get back to the drowning now, please, or at least run screaming all the way back to Domino and look into transferring to a different high school for the last few months before graduation.

Instead Ryou blinks, takes a deep breath, and says, "Thank you for plugging my phone in."

Yugi doesn't respond and cold bolts down Ryou's spine because this can't be happening _again_ , imagining Amane was one thing but Yugi is another matter entirely—but after a long, tense moment, Yugi lets out a deep sigh and flops over onto his back. He tosses a hand melodramatically over his eyes and he sounds exhausted when he says, "Please don't ever do that again."

He doesn't _sound_ mad, but Ryou freezes anyway. "I'm sorry." He's not, not really, he knows he's a goddamn inconvenience at the best of times but nobody asked Yugi to go barrelling in and save the day.

Yugi peeks at him from under his arm. "Did you do it on purpose?"

"I was trying to ask my dead little sister what the hell she was doing in the onsen," Ryou deadpans, and backtracks when Yugi all-but flings himself around to face Ryou again. "But no, it was an accident."

"Are you sure—"

"Getting into the bath half-asleep and by myself was not one of my finer moments," Ryou tells him, rolling onto his back and wincing at the throb in his chest, "but it definitely was an accident." Out of the corner of his eye he sees Yugi glance at the scars. "Thank you. I mean it."

Yugi levers himself up with a groan and Ryou sees the lick of red, irritated skin up his arms and down his legs from where he jumped into the scalding water. Ryou leans up on his elbows, mouth open to apologize, but Yugi puts up a hand to stop him. The last time Ryou had seen this particular expression on Yugi's face, he'd been partway through the duel with Atem. "Ryou, are you okay?"

His mouth is already open and it's muscle memory now, like holding his breath before a dive or rolling his shoulders when he ducks under the metro turnstile. "I'm fi—"

If asked, Ryou would have guessed that Yugi was about thirty kilograms soaking wet. He's forced to reconsider, however, when Yugi swings a leg over Ryou's waist and _sits on him_ and who was it, which god did Ryou offend so grievously that they've seen fit to have him die by spontaneous combustion? Ryou yelps, stunned and mortified, his cheeks flaring the same red as Yugi's hands. Hands that Yugi slaps on Ryou's chest with surprising force—and of course Ryou's not wearing a shirt, his pajamas are still in the cubby where he'd left them last night and he's probably not wearing any goddamn _shorts_ either—and his scowl is fierce when Ryou finally looks up at him. "Ryou, I swear to god if you say you're _fine_ , we're going back to the onsen and I'm going to drown you for real!" He drums an impatient finger on Ryou's collarbone when Ryou glances away and doesn't continue until he looks back up at him. "I'm your friend, damnit! I'm your _friend_ , and that means when you see your dead sister wandering the hallways you get the hell up and come _tell_ me, okay, not go running after her!"

"She wasn't wandering the hallways," Ryou mumbles, looking very intently at Yugi's left ear. "She was sitting in the onsen."

"Ryou!"

Yugi shifts on Ryou's waist and this is about to be a much bigger, more embarrassing debacle than Ryou is willing to endure. "I can't breathe," Ryou caves, knows Yugi's looking for something, anything, but _fine_ as an answer. He rolls his shoulders against the futon mattress in the hopes that Yugi will move his hands.

He doesn't. Yugi smiles, says, "Better," and then Ryou's words must actually click because his face is concerned once again. "Wait, is it because of last night? Did the water burn your lungs? Should we take you to the hospital?"

"You're, uh, sitting on my diaphragm."

"Oh!" Yugi finally, mercifully, scoots off of him. Ryou takes a deep, indulgent breath that lasts for all of a second before his lungs protest violently and he jerks up, coughing hard. Yugi's hands are on him immediately, one wrapping around his arm and the other gripping his shoulder. "Ryou!"

Yugi's voice sounds oddly doubled to Ryou, and he realizes it's because Yugi hadn't been the only one to yell his name. At the door, Anzu knocks and calls his name again before sliding the door open a crack and peeking in, and Ryou has the wherewithal to glance down and make sure he's got shorts on before he waves her in. Anzu looks between the two of them with the most startlingly pleased expression on her face until Yugi barely, slowly, shakes his head and Ryou gets the sneaking suspicion they're having some sort of secret conversation only a frequency only available to the best of friends. Anzu's expression is carefully schooled into something much milder when she says, "Honda made breakfast and I'm guessing we have about two minutes before Jou eats it all."

Yugi pulls his hands away from Ryou. "We'll be over in a minute, okay?"

Anzu shrugs and slides the door shut behind her, and Yugi waits for the click of the latch before he flops back onto the futon. Ryou nudges him with his foot and Yugi groans dramatically. "We should probably go," Ryou tells him.

They dress in silence, Ryou passing Yugi one of his shirts when he sees Yugi rifling through the still-sodden pile of clothing he'd been wearing last night. It's too long and the neckline is a hair too wide, but Yugi shrugs it on over his boxers and waits for Ryou to pull on his jeans before opening the door. "Any idea what you want to do today?"

Ryou's every breath feels like sandpaper, so he doesn't really have to think about it. "Not the onsen."

Yugi laughs. "Not the onsen."

/

An hour later, Ryou wishes he'd just grit his teeth and climbed into the onsen after all. Instead, they'd put on music and scrounged up a pack of cards, and Ryou watches Yugi dance with Anzu while Jou and Honda snipe over the rules of Old Maid. The cicada-buzz voice in his head, so stunningly silent over breakfast that Ryou had almost forgotten it was there, picks up like dissociation is going out of style and the music fades to a dull roar in the background of Ryou's own three-ring circus. He's jealous, Ryou decides in a brief moment of self-awareness while the metronome wavers between a yawning gulf of emptiness and the screaming maelstrom that is the emotional flavor of the day, jealous that Yugi can be so comfortable and friendly and _open_ when Ryou's entire life is a coin toss of whether or not he'll wake up in a mind that sits like an ill-fitting suit—

( _It's like looking in a funhouse mirror,_ the Spirit says, the first and only time he'd taken over during one of Ryou's therapy sessions, _there's not much in here left to break that wasn't put together ass-backwards in the first place._ )

Warm fingers thread through his and Ryou jumps, yanked from his own musings to find Yugi sliding onto the couch next to him and pulling the edge of the table closer with his free hand. Yugi smiles at his panicked expression and their fingers stay laced together under the tabletop while Jou, Anzu, and Honda sit opposite them, while Jou deals the cards and announces that they'll be playing Rich Man, Poor Man instead of Old Maid while Honda sulks, and right up until Yugi pulls away to play his first card. Ryou takes a deep, steady, painful breath and passes his turn, gripping his cards so tight his fingertips are bloodless. If anything, Yugi doesn't seem to notice and scoots even closer. Their legs are pressed together until the table and the deep steady breathing is agonizing but Ryou is _fine_ , this is _not a big deal_ —if he's not having a nervous breakdown or trying to take over the world while possessed then he's misinterpreting the signals from one of his best friends to fill the hole in his own greedy little heart. Yugi was practically sitting in Ryuuji's lap during their last game night so this is obviously just Yugi being Yugi, still worried because Ryou had almost _died_ the night before and _nothing else_. Ryou inhales through his nose until his chest aches and smiles. He ends up playing the Poor Man in all five rounds and that's just so funny he could cry.

/

Ryou celebrates his stellar losing streak sitting on his bed, dragging a comb through his still-soggy, ratted hair and swearing in all the languages he knows. It's his fault, mostly for drowning but _especially_ for not bothering to tie up his hair before summoning the dead (or hallucinating brilliantly, he's still not sure), and he gives up after the third time the brush snarls through his bangs. He tosses it across the room with a groan and runs a hand through his hair before he thinks better and it gets tangled too. Ryou pulls his fingers loose of the rat's nest and settles for resting his chin in his palm. "Are you fucking kidding me?"

Someone knocks on his door, and Ryou considers staying very, very quiet and pretending he's not there. The shadow behind the door doesn't budge, knocks again.

Ryou sighs. "Apparently not." He scrapes his hair back away from his face and leans back against the wall. "Come in!"

Yugi slips in through the smallest opening in the door he can manage and Ryou grimaces. Fucking lovely. But Yugi doesn't so much as glance at the brush in his way as he shuts the door behind him and pads across the room. He stops at Ryou's outstretched feet, curls and uncurls his hands into fists at his sides and chews his bottom lip.

Ryou's going to get a crick in his neck looking up at him. "Yugi, are you—"

Yugi folds suddenly, knees hitting the tatami hard and this is the second time in the past day that Ryou's had this boy in his lap. He slips his fingers into Ryou's hair and Ryou makes a vague sound of protest and then, then Yugi is kissing him. It's achingly sweet and Ryou is too stunned at first to do more than _be_ kissed, but Yugi shuffles forward and wraps his fingers around Ryou's wrists to place his arms around Yugi's lap. He slides his own around Ryou's shoulders and catches Ryou's bottom lip between his teeth before leaning back in to kiss him again. Ryou cinches his arms tighter around Yugi's waist and feels him smile, runs his tongue against the seam of Yugi's lips and they open with a muffled groan that Ryou can feel where Yugi's chest is pressed against his and this—this is _nice._

Ryou's shoulders ache from how hard he's pressed into the wall when they finally pull apart, and Yugi's hands drift down to his chest when Ryou shifts. He traces the band logo on Ryou's shirt and rests his forehead against Ryou's collarbone, and he's shaking his head when he speaks. "I'm so sorry."

It's not _exactly_ what Ryou was expecting to hear and he spirals just the tiniest bit— _he's only interested because you can't keep yourself from wandering into death at every turn, it's adrenaline or relief or his flair for the dramatic because let's be honest, there's nothing that Yugi is if not dramatic and you should be grateful because the last time he was like this someone got lit on fire_ —but he can't stop from tracing his hand up Yugi's spine and back down to settle against his hip because goddamnit, he thought he was going to _have this_. "I see," he settles on.

Yugi chuckles. "I mean—that was—" He huffs a breath and it fans against Ryou's chest. "I should've at least _asked_ first."

Ryou doesn't quite follow. "Asked?"

Yugi looks up fast. Ryou's chin doesn't end up smacking him right in the forehead, but it's a near thing. "Before I just walked into your room and _sat on you_ and kissed you?"

He doesn't point out that not four hours ago, Yugi had no problem sitting on him without asking. "I don't mind."

"I mean, Anzu was so gung-ho about me going for it because it's been _months_ and I was going to talk to you like a normal person but then you almost died and I was so _worried_ and I get a bit dramatic, I know, and this is sort of ridiculous and—" Yugi stops, chest heaving. "Wait. You don't mind?"

Somewhere, distantly, Ryou's aware that he's being asked a question. Instead, he fixates on, " _Months?_ "

Yugi flushes all the way up to his ears. He drums his fingers against Ryou's chest in agitation. "Yeah?" He jerks back, suddenly, but Ryou's arms trap him where he sits. "It's fine, Ryou, if you don't—if you don't want to—"

"I'm so pissed," Ryou cuts him off, and Yugi _cringes_ , "that I didn't notice anything for _months._ " He laughs and brushes Yugi's hair from his face and Yugi _lets him_. "Though I'll admit that you sitting in Ryuuji's lap maybe threw me off a little."

Yugi scowls. "I wouldn't have sat in his lap if he didn't sit in my spot while we were—but, Ryou! That's not the point!"

Ryou arches an eyebrow and smirks. "It's not?"

It earns him a smack right in the chest and he deserves it, but Yugi can only keep his thunderous scowl for a moment before he grins. "I actually came in here to ask what you wanted to get for lunch. We can drive down and get it and, uh," Yugi glances down at his hands, "talk?"

Ryou smiles. Yugi's hands are wandering back around his neck and the cicada-thrum in the back of his mind is for once—for now—silent. His face is as red as Yugi's, he knows. "I, um—yes. Yes." He presses forward, speaks against Yugi's lips before he slots their mouths together for a kiss. "Let's talk."

* * *

 **the title of the fic is from** ** _past the rivers,_** **because i think i'm hilarious and valente is my favourite author/poet. as always, and we're on tumblr under the same username if you want to come scream about yugioh with us!**


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